Facing the factsFinancial and human losses are escalating. In the 1990s, damage from storms, floods and droughts cost the world economy more than US$50 for every man, woman and child on earth. The $300 billion costs of repairs and relief were up by a factor of four on those of the 1980s (see section 1.3.1*). One of the world’s biggest reinsurance companies Munich Re has estimated that global warming could push annual losses to more than US$200 billion by 2050, unless the various stakeholders, including governments, act quickly to adapt to our changing climate. The human cost is also huge and rising. According to statistics reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), hydrometeorological disasters (storms, floods and droughts) claimed more than half a million lives during the decade 1991-2000. In all, the number of people affected by the disasters topped two billion. Many of these victims are the poorest members of society, driven by circumstances to settle in flood plains or on other marginal land. For them, being "affected" by a flood or drought can mean losing everything they possess and relying on emergency relief until they can start again to rebuild their fragile livelihoods. National development is at risk. The immediate effects of extreme weather events are tragic and costly, but they are not the end of the story. At the community level, lost homes, livelihoods and nfrastructure can take years to replace. For governments, the impact of lost crops, lost power generation and physical damage to transportation and other infrastructure can wipe out decades of development. It has been widely reported that Hurricane Mitch set back economic development in several Central American countries by 20 years. Successive droughts in Kenya in 1997/8 and 1999/2000 are said to have cost the country 40-49% of its GDP (section 4.4.3*), while in Mozambique GDP is reported to have fallen by 23% as a result of the 1999 floods section 1.3.1*). The Millennium Development Goals to tackle hunger and poverty are put at risk by the threat of more frequent climate extremes. Nature is a victim too. Climatic variations are an essential part of nature and many aquatic ecosystems depend on seasonal fluctuations in rainfall and river flows. Over the years though, escalating withdrawals of water for human consumption, food production and industrial use have meant diminishing availability of water to preserve ecosystems. Realisation has been growing recently that safeguarding ecosystems brings multiple benefits, while losing them has serious social costs on top of the environmental ones. When the effects of intensifying climate extremes are superimposed on increasing water demands for all uses, protecting nature is both more vital and more challenging. In the floodplains of the River Niger in West Africa, steadily declining river flows have meant a reduction of as much as 60% in the area of land used for recession rice cultivation and near collapse of the fishing industry in the inner Niger delta (section 2.4.1*). The poorest are the most vulnerable. Extreme weather causes damage wherever it strikes. The impacts though are different from place to place. Flood-swollen rivers periodically lead to extensive property damage and big insurance claims in Europe, the USA and Japan. Significantly more flood protection and odified land-use planning are going to be necessary in many industrialised countries to adapt to changing climate regimes. In the developed world, impacts are on a wholly different scale, as the headline-making floods in Bangladesh and Mozambique have amply demonstrated. Deaths, disease and displacement of disadvantaged communities are the devastating impacts of severe floods in the lesser developed countries (LDCs). In these countries too, the capacity to cope with climate extremes depends on more than the severity of the event. The availability of human, technical and financial resources conditions both the preparedness and the response. When donors and relief agencies seek to determine priority areas on the basis of vulnerability to climate change or climate variability, the local capacity to cope is a critical factor. A new "Climate Vulnerability Index", still in the developmental stages, seeks to combine developmental, geographic and environmental parameters with Vulnerability is a gender issue too. Women’s traditional roles as providers of household water and food and custodians of family health become very much more stressful and burdensome in the aftermath of a major flood. The informal and agricultural sectors are often the most impacted by natural disasters, leaving women unemployed. Women in informal sector work, such as street vending, child care and domestic work, or owners of small home-based businesses, may lose their jobs and have no means of securing compensation from recovery programmes. On the other hand, focusing solely on women’s vulnerability can be misleading, since they often have untapped skills, coping strategies, and knowledge that can be used to minimise the impacts of disaster. For example, drawing on experience gained from managing large extended households, individual women have turned their homes into feeding centres and shelters for displaced members of their communities. Women's shared commitment to the welfare of their families and communities often leads them to form spontaneous women's organisations during disasters. At other times, existing women's organisations focus their activities to respond to community needs caused by disasters. These special attributes of women are rarely recognised formally in any disaster-preparedness plans, though they do tend to emerge spontaneously when disaster strikes. Click here to continue to the next chapter: Combining skills |
